Jupiter Reseach - End Story

07/23/2006

In another part of the blogopshere I'm a guest blogger at The Medical Blog Network and thought a post on medical/healthcare consumer searches would be interesting. Jupiter Research recently dropped a media release highlighting results from a study about healhcare search engines. I had a couple of questions. So I dropped David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan an email asking for clarification of the methodology. With 24-hours I received a detailed response from Vic Beck, VP, Peter Arnold Associates.

According to my pal Bill Neal, SDR, Inc., the information complied with APOOR Ethics Standards. Bill's comments are at the end of the post. Thanks to Bill and Thomas M. Guterbock, APPOR Ethics Chair for their on-going help.

Perhaps one day all research firms will include the methodology with their releases a la Harris Interactive and get that providing this type of data is not giving away trade secrets but establishing credibility of their results and conclusions as well as, of the organization.

In the meantime, kudos to Peter Arnold and Jupiter Research for providing the data quickly and kindly when requested. It's nice to know that a social media "community" can encourage positive changes. My hope is that this will be a win-win for all.

Sidebar: David has a great post on Logic + Emotion, People Respond: The New PR, that is a must read for business bloggers and companies who are/have been/will be touched by social media = every biz diva and divo.

Vic agreed to allow me to post the methodology. Following is JupiterResearch's methodology for its Health Search Report along with Bill's commentary.

[Vic Beck] Here is the detail in response to your question.

In May 2006, JupiterResearch designed and fielded a survey to online consumers selected randomly from the Ipsos US online consumer panel. [Bill Neal] Okay, that is a good panel and is well managed - however, they should reveal to total number of persons/households in that sampling frame - was it the entire 400,000 or 2 million?. A total of 2,157 individuals responded to the survey. [Bill Neal] They should reveal the number of invitations sent out so one can assess the response rate. Generally, anything under 20% for a panel is highly suspect. Respondents were asked approximately 25 closed-ended questions about their behaviors, attitudes and preferences as they relate to wireless high speed Internet access at home and in public places, online authentication measures, searching for health and wellness information online, and searching for information on homeowners' insurance.

Respondents received an e-mail invitation to participate in the survey with an attached URL linked to the Web-based survey form. [Bill Neal] That is typical for online panel surveys. The samples were carefully balanced by a series of demographic and behavioral characteristics to ensure that they were representative of the online population. Demographic weighting variables included age, gender, household income, household education, household type, region, market size, race and Hispanic ethnicity. [Bill Neal] Okay, that's good. Additionally, JupiterResearch took the unconventional step of weighting the data by AOL usage, online tenure, and connection speed (broadband versus dial-up), three key determinants of online behavior. [Bill Neal] That's even better.

Balancing quotas are derived from JupiterResearch's Internet Population Model which relies on US Census Bureau data and a rich foundation of primary consumer survey research to determine the size, demographics and ethnographics of the US online population. The survey data are fully applicable to the US online population within a confidence interval of plus or minus three percent.[Bill Neal] Good!

In this survey effort, JupiterResearch worked with its research partner, Ipsos-Insight, on the technical tasks of survey fielding, sample building, balancing, and data processing. Ipsos-Insight is one of the largest market research companies in the US and maintains a general research panel of 400,000 households. Ipsos-Insight also has access to the Ipsos US Online Panel, which comprises two million Internet users, offering JupiterResearch an easy way to target and survey current online users. Panel-based market research enables researchers to have baseline knowledge of each survey respondent, increase survey participation rates, and permit careful rationing of survey fielding to reduce survey burnout.[Bill Neal] Generally sounds legit from a data collection point of view. Exceptions noted above.

Trackbacks

Trackback url:

Â» JupiterKagan Changes Its Stripes from HealthCareVox Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog talks about how JupiterKagan responded to her latest request for methodological information on one of its healthcare-related studies. JupiterKagan responded to her query promptly and completely. The com... [Read More]